


the way you've been rambling you'll lead me astray

by village_skeptic



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Dark Humor, F/M, Gen, Murder Most Foul, dirty deeds done dirt cheap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-04
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-12-11 00:47:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11703285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/village_skeptic/pseuds/village_skeptic
Summary: It’s not like heintendedfor this to happen.Or: Jason Blossom evaluates his choices, and makes a bad one. A what-if? AU one-shot.





	the way you've been rambling you'll lead me astray

It’s not like he _intended_ for this to happen.

Honestly, if he would have known that this was how everything was going to turn out, he definitely never would have hooked up with Polly Cooper in the first place. 

Sure, she was hot, but so were Trini Lopez and Nancy Woods, and of course any of the other River Vixens. Just offhand, that was like, twenty other hot chicks at Riverdale High, and probably all of them would have been less of a fucking hassle than Polly had turned out to be.

He didn’t mind doing the couple thing, at first. They did look good together – Polly in her Vixens outfit, him in his football uniform. It was a real kind of all-American teenage sweethearts thing. John Hughes- and John Mellencamp-approved, right? 

And it didn’t hurt that she was a spectacular lay. Turned out that under that good-girl facade, she was kind of a freak. _He_ certainly never would have thought of choking a girl with her own headband. 

 

Hot as it had undeniably been, shit like that probably should have been his first clue that it wasn’t going to end well between them. Like Chuck always used to say: “Don’t stick your dick in crazy.” 

Well, and he had been as careful as anyone could have expected him to have been. Polly had sworn up and down that she was on birth control – what was he supposed to do, call her every day to make sure she took the damn pill?

He had offered to pay for her to get rid of it, of course. That’s what you did in situations like this, and he wasn’t a total asshole. It’s not like money was an issue or anything. 

But she wanted to keep it. God, she had this completely batshit fantasy about them getting married and running away to a farm upstate together.

He was seventeen. He was being scouted for swimming scholarships – a full ride to Yale, for Christ’s sake. What the fuck was he going to do on a farm?

 

It got ugly then, when he told her that he was _absolutely not_ going to run away to the nineteenth century with her and raise this kid that neither of them had intended to make. She started threatening him – saying that she’d go to his father and tell him all about it. 

He knew how that would go. What kind of leader of the Blossom Maple brand would he make if he didn’t even have the foresight to avoid fathering a bastard on a treacherous whore like that? How could he be expected to ensure the company’s success in the cutthroat world of maple syrup arbitrage, now that he’d shown that he could been outwitted by a slip of a girl shaking her pom-poms at him? 

So he started sketching out a plan. 

 

He talked Polly down from the ledge; gave her back his letterman jacket; fed her a bunch of shit about how he’d just been scared, but that he knew now that they were meant to be together forever. 

Just to make sure she bought it, he got the ring from senile Nana Rose and proposed to her one night while they sat in his car. He made her promise not to tell anyone, of course – “we don’t want to tip anyone off about our plan, babe.” 

And then he sat in a booth with her at Pop’s and drank milkshakes and listened to her talk about the _stupid fucking farm_ over and over again.

It crossed his mind that Nana Rose might tell someone that he’d asked for the ring, but he quickly decided that it didn’t matter. No one would believe her anyway; and probably sooner rather than later, she’d be dead too.

 

Everyone from Riverdale knew where you had to go if you needed some shady shit done, no questions asked. He’d been to the White Wyrm a few times before to score some weed, but he was counting on the darker stories he’d heard about the place being more than just rumor. 

When he let it be known that he was looking for something a little bit more complicated than your standard drug deal, he found himself referred immediately to the leader of the Serpents. Tall guy, scruffy beard, red-rimmed eyes, but clearly smarter than your average criminal. 

They worked out a deal: he’d transport a shipment of extremely lucrative “product” for them, and in return, the Serpent guy would take care of his problem with Polly. 

Driving home with the top down on the convertible, he gave into his impulse to plug in the aux cord, turn up the AC/DC song and sing along. If he had to be in this dumb-ass nightmare situation – and he _didn’t_ have to be, that was the entire point, she’d _made_ him do this – if he had to be in this situation, why not have some fun with it where he could?

 

He did exactly what the Serpent guy told him to, and told Polly that she should meet him in Eversgreen Forest, on the afternoon of July 4th. While everyone was distracted by celebrating the holiday, they would run away together and start their new life.

Meanwhile, he got Cheryl alone and told her that he realized that it had been way too long since they had done anything just the two of them together, like it used to be. It wasn't hard to get her to agree to a twins-only 4th of July canoe trip down the Sweetwater River. They would leave early in the morning, before the heat of the day.

On July 2nd, just as planned, he got a text on the burner phone that the Serpent leader had given him. It told him where he was supposed to go the next morning to meet the guy with the car full of “product” that he was supposed to deliver: an abandoned stretch of highway off of Route 40, behind the old Blossom maple syrup sign. 

He figured that was kind of a message – _I know who you are_. They hadn’t used any names, but his picture had been plastered over the front page of the sports section for most of last year, for anyone who cared to see it. One of the perks of being a golden boy.

Whatever. It’s not like he didn’t have enough money to deal with blackmail or something – and the Serpent guy was the one who would be pulling the trigger anyway. 

 

The car was in a good spot – you couldn’t see it from the road. He had to get out of the convertible and walk for a little bit before he saw it, partially hidden by some brush. The Serpent guy was leaning on the trunk, arms crossed. Waiting for him.

“Sure hope you know how to drive stick, kid,” he said dryly.

He assured him that, yes, he did, and then the Serpent motioned him around to the trunk and popped it.

“Want you to take a quick look at the situation in here, just in case you get pulled over or something.”

He leaned down over the trunk, which was weirdly empty – where was the “product” he was supposed to be transporting? – and then he heard the click by his ear, and had just a split second to think, _oh fuck_.

 

She came out from behind the stand of brush from which she’d watched the whole thing, and kicked the body with the tip of her high-heeled shoe. “Spoiled little ginger shit.”

FP laughed dryly. “Well, he certainly spoiled the inside of this trunk, that’s for sure. You got the lighter fluid?”

As they watched the car burn, she nudged him and said, “You know I would have done it, right?”

“Oh, I know you would have,” he said. And then, slinging an arm around her shoulder to pull her closer, he whispered in her ear – “Snakes don’t shed their skins so easily.”

**Author's Note:**

> Both the title and the initial concept for this fic come from the traditional song/murder ballad "Pretty Polly," because how could I resist? There's some great background about the song [here](http://www.planetslade.com/pretty-polly01.html). Vandeveer has [a nice modern version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9g8BV6zrVBs) and the video is gorgeous; but it's tough to beat [this live traditional version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XV7mxfIIr0) with Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless.
> 
> The AC/DC song that Jason sings along to is, of course, ["Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onE43h_TUUY)
> 
> Your explanation for the Epic Romance of Jason Blossom and Polly Cooper is as good as mine, but this was sure fun to write. :D
> 
> Anyway, I thrive on kudos and comments, so thanks in advance for your feedback! You can also come say hi on tumblr at village-skeptic.


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